Re: Fade to White
If it's true that China is destined to become the world's leading power in a generation or two, then maybe Asian-Americans will shift their identity to the winner across the Pacific. With the triumph of China, another scenario that may play out is a kind of double consciousness (to borrow W.E.B. Dubois' term) among Asian-Americans who identify with both Asia and America. The triumph of China may exacerbate the perception that Asian-Americans are 'the other' or perpetual foreigners. These are possibilities that can affect Asian-American assimilation.

QuinnMontana

11/5/2013 11:46:59 AM

Sorry, your site won't let me include paragraph breaks.

QuinnMontana

11/5/2013 11:46:20 AM

On Being Dumb—
Kenneth Goldsmith evades the real truth behind the vision of the world in which he lives. “Smart dumb” is only for the accidentally wealthy. It is not the world of those who worked with clenched teeth and calculating minds, “having sweated for what it’s accomplished” - his grandfather’s world perhaps - but only for those having been born to the rewards of that world. His grandfather’s world was “smart smart” and way too hard. His world is one where everything is easy and to be ironic is considered a calling.
It takes a coddled and cultured upbringing with access to myriad musical genres to even know that Thelonious Monk had inserted “wrong notes.” This isn’t “going through smart to get to dumb,” it’s hypocrisy: living in infinite financial security while claiming to be self-made. It takes exposure to both “stuffy” museums, and modern galleries, to theater and poetry and lots and lots of time and lebensraum in which to reflect and rebel for a person to deconstruct John Cage or Gertrude Stein. It is the expansive mindset of those in a very cloistered world.
In Mr. Goldsmith’s world everything is available so nothing has value. “A florescent tube leaned up against a wall is worth a million dollars …a plumbing fixture on a pedestal is considered the most important art work of the century.” It is a world of smugness. And Goldsmith has made it clear from the first sentence that he considers himself a prototypical icon of that group. Too clever, he believes, to work hard and flip enough to brag about it. A world where becoming poet laureate to the Museum of Modern Art came from rubbing elbows in Istanbul or Lech am Arlberg.
It is a world oblivious to people outside his clique. Where words like compassion and humility are dredged up only for TED talks. Where donation to charity means lavish dinners (to which one arrives rumpled) and writing a check for the museum at which they are showing. Where glib articles promoting dumbness are written to Utne magazine.
Mr. Goldsmith’s world is as cold as the jazz he admires, no doubt sardonically. It is a world without humanity. I pity him.

QuinnMontana

11/5/2013 11:44:03 AM

On Being Dumb—
Kenneth Goldsmith evades the real truth behind the vision of the world in which he lives. “Smart dumb” is only for the accidentally wealthy. It is not the world of those who worked with clenched teeth and calculating minds, “having sweated for what it’s accomplished” - his grandfather’s world perhaps - but only for those having been born to the rewards of that world. His grandfather’s world was “smart smart” and way too hard. His world is one where everything is easy and to be ironic is considered a calling.
It takes a coddled and cultured upbringing with access to myriad musical genres to even know that Thelonious Monk had inserted “wrong notes.” This isn’t “going through smart to get to dumb,” it’s hypocrisy: living in infinite financial security while claiming to be self-made. It takes exposure to both “stuffy” museums, and modern galleries, to theater and poetry and lots and lots of time and lebensraum in which to reflect and rebel for a person to deconstruct John Cage or Gertrude Stein. It is the expansive mindset of those in a very cloistered world.
In Mr. Goldsmith’s world everything is available so nothing has value. “A florescent tube leaned up against a wall is worth a million dollars …a plumbing fixture on a pedestal is considered the most important art work of the century.” It is a world of smugness. And Goldsmith has made it clear from the first sentence that he considers himself a prototypical icon of that group. Too clever, he believes, to work hard and flip enough to brag about it. A world where becoming poet laureate to the Museum of Modern Art came from rubbing elbows in Istanbul or Lech am Arlberg.
It is a world oblivious to people outside his clique. Where words like compassion and humility are dredged up only for TED talks. Where donation to charity means lavish dinners (to which one arrives rumpled) and writing a check for the museum at which they are showing. Where glib articles promoting dumbness are written to Utne magazine.
Mr. Goldsmith’s world is as cold as the jazz he admires, no doubt sardonically. It is a world without humanity. I pity him.